


Among the Stars

by eye_of_a_cat



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Alien Culture, Earth-Minbari War, F/M, Minbari, Minbari caste drama, Pre-Canon, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 16:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14958461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eye_of_a_cat/pseuds/eye_of_a_cat
Summary: Short backstory for the S1 episode 'Legacies'. Delenn and Branmer in the early days of the war.





	Among the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is I think the first B5 fic I ever wrote, originally posted on LJ in 2004.

When Delenn decided not to wear her Satai robes that morning, it was not because she was ashamed. She had little time left on Minbar, and the desire to see Yedor again before leaving had grown like an ache within her, until even thinking of how strongly the others would disapprove of her absence could not make her stay. She wanted to hear the city speak with a thousand voices, as her father had always told her it did, and walk familiar streets once again without being recognised for who and what she was. She suspected this was a ridiculous thing to want at the beginning of a war, but she could not ignore it any longer. And so, leaving a brief message with a confused aide, she stepped out into the city and disappeared into its crowds.  
  
At first, she assumed the nagging discomfort was due to the meetings she was missing, but despite herself she knew she did not feel even remotely guilty over that. Something about the city itself was different, wrong, like a note played slightly out of tune. Yedor was no longer speaking with a thousand voices. Although the streets were as crowded and noisy as she had expected, there was only one voice, speaking everywhere she turned of anger and grief and war. Suddenly, she wanted very much to be alone.  
  
There was a small park not far away where she had often gone to think. She found herself making her way there against the crowds, tugging up her hood as the rain started to fall. The park was empty, as she had half-hoped and half-feared. In the past she had stood here for hours, watching the city sprawled out beneath her, listening to the wind sing through crystal spires. Now, she looked down at her hands instead, folded on the low wall in front of her. So strange that hands once covered in Dukhat’s blood, hands which struck the first blow in anger and despair after his death, would be so small and pale. So strange that those hands would belong to her.  
  
She heard footsteps approach behind her, almost as quiet as the whisper of the rain. This was inevitable, she knew – Satai were not permitted to walk away whenever they wished – but she did not want to go back, not yet, and so she said nothing. The footsteps stopped. She allowed herself a brief glance at the figure now standing beside her, and saw warrior armour instead of the white robes of an aide, and knew immediately who it was.  
  
“I thought you would be here,” he said.  
  
She kept her eyes fixed firmly downwards. In the stone beneath her hands, faint veins of quartz arced and swirled.  
  
“Delenn.” She did not move. “ _Satai_ Delenn. Look at me.”  
  
She did. His armour was glistening black and silver in the rain, and his hood cast strange shadows over his face. For the briefest of seconds, she did not recognise him.  
  
“Am I to call you Shai Alyt now?” she asked, her voice harsher than she intended.  
  
“I would prefer Branmer.” And for a moment, he _did_ look like a warrior, his armour no longer awkwardly out of place but majestic, as if he was born to wear it. Then he smiled, and was Branmer again. “Come out of the rain,” he said, guiding her with a hand on her shoulder to a sheltered alcove.  
  
They sat in silence to begin with, and she leant into the curl of his arm, her face pressed into the rough fabric of his cloak. The rain drummed down overhead, and he held her close, and they did not speak because no words mattered.  
  
“I wish you could accept this, Delenn,” he said eventually, his fingers stroking reassuring circles on the skin just below her headbone. “This is the calling of my heart, and I must follow it. Can you not understand?”  
  
She did not cry, but the rain itself was tears, falling over the city. “You are not a warrior,” she said.  
  
“My father –“  
  
“But _you_ are not a warrior.” The need to tell him, to make him understand, drowned out all the promises she had made to herself of saying nothing. “The religious caste is also needed in this war. If the best of us leave, what will become of us?”  
  
“We are one people, Delenn, not three.” He pulled her closer to leave a kiss gentle as sunlight on her forehead. “Am I so different because of my chosen caste? Are they?”  
  
“If it meant so little to you, why would you convert?”  
  
“For Dukhat.” He let his arm fall away from her shoulders, lost for a moment in a wave of sorrow she could feel like a physical pull. “I served him as a priest, and I will avenge his murder as a warrior. He was my friend before he was ever Chosen One. This matters more to me than caste and clan.”  
  
“And me?” She looked down at the sleeves of her robe, drenched through with cold rain, and fought the urge to shiver. “You once told me I mattered more to you than caste or clan.”  
  
There was steel in his voice. “That never changed,” he said. “I completed the parting rituals, but it was your decision and not mine. You know that.”  
  
She said nothing, but she did not resist when he took her hands between his own. She could feel the warmth of his skin through the leather gloves, and found comfort in the memory of old embraces. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “And it is unlike you,” he said, “to use my own words against me. Why are you so afraid? We are at war, Delenn. I do not fear death, and you should not fear it for me.”  
  
“But to die out among the stars, away from home…”  
  
“It would not be so bad. I think I might even prefer that, to have my ashes scattered between the stars. My life should mean more than my death.”  
  
She remembered him telling her that once before. She was barely out of temple then, a junior aide serving the Council of Caste Elders, young and terrified and determined all at once. When she and Branmer worked together, she stumbled over her own words and silently cursed herself for it. She tried to exist only in the reports and notes she made, hoping she would not be noticed until she was older and wiser. Branmer’s offered friendship had been a gift almost too precious to touch.  
  
In the evening, they would walk together through city streets and down to the river where children played on the flagstones by the water’s edge. She remembered the sound of their laughter, like singing birds. They walked home slowly by the longest route possible, and she filled up the time with conversation, still reluctant to admit she could find such joy in his presence without any words.  
  
One night, exhausted by neverending negotiations with representatives from the worker caste, she told Branmer she would be poor company and needed to rest. Instead of agreeing to see her the next morning, he became even more insistent that she accompany him on their usual walk. She would understand, he said. He would not tell her any more.  
  
She went with him, but he would not speak until they reached the river. Instead of turning to walk along its bank as they normally did, he stopped, and motioned for her to sit beside him on a low bench by the water. She did not protest, although she was tired and felt cold even in the late summer evening’s warmth. She rested her head on his shoulder as he put an arm around her, and felt so peaceful, so at home.  
  
As the sky gradually darkened and the lights of the city were reflected in the river, he told her that they were like stars, that the lights so bright they blotted out the night sky were truly just reflecting its glory. He told her that the rituals of meditation and prayer sometimes stopped them seeing what they did not already expect to see, that a mind distracted even through tiredness could listen to the universe and hear what the best-taught priests would miss. He spoke of meaning, and memory, and the way the stars would seem to be burning long after their death, their light transcending mortality and time. He told her he wanted to become like they were.  
  
They walked home through streets so quiet she thought they were the only people in the city, and when they came to the point where their paths parted, she did not want to leave. Instead, she reached up to kiss him, no longer caring whether or not he would think it appropriate, no longer caring about anything but the sound of his voice and the feel of his skin. She could sense his surprise quickly fading as he returned the kiss, his hands on her face and neck and tracing feather-light over the blaze of blue on her scalp. His voice was trembling as he asked her to perform the rituals with him, and her only regret was that they had not done so earlier.  
  
They were lovers for several years, although she refused his requests to become more. Since he was half-joking when he made them, she replied in the same tone, asking him what his warrior caste family would think if he chose a religious caste mate. He laughed as though he had never meant it seriously, and said she meant more to him than any such things, but she knew he was disappointed. Still, it did not seem to matter too much, not then; they were in love, and she did not doubt they would carry out the next rituals eventually. When she was chosen to serve the Grey Council, and spent the greater part of each year in space, her feelings for him never changed. The stars reminded him of her when she was away, and he was always there when she returned to Minbar, and she thought it was not possible to love anyone more than she loved him.  
  
Then, the war, and Branmer’s decision to join the warrior caste. She first heard of it from one of the warrior caste Satai, who assumed she already knew – as she would have, no doubt, if she had not been refusing to accept any messages from Minbar that were not official business. She sent a brief, formal message to Branmer telling him she would not require him to be present for the parting rituals, and resolutely ignored all his attempts to reply. After a time, he stopped trying. His final message, which she played over and over again whenever she had a moment to herself, said that he accepted her decision but he could never agree with it. _And whether warrior or religious,_ he added, _I love you._  
  
Now, curled up close at his side with his gloved hands still covering her own, she wanted to close her eyes and pretend they were sitting once again by a river, watching stars burn in the water.  
  
“You are still a priest in your heart,” she said.  
  
“I am who I have always been.” He placed his palm on her chest, bowing low when she returned the gesture. “And if I ever forget that, I know you will remind me.”  
  
She knew that the others would be looking for her by now, but still she did not leave until the rain began to die away and she could feel the sun’s warmth on her face. Branmer stood and bowed formally in the manner of the religious caste, and she could not help but laugh at seeing him, dressed in his warrior armour.  
  
“I will see you again,” he said. “And I will not expect you to call me Shai Alyt.”  
  
She considered telling him that she would have refused anyway, out of stubbornness more than principle, but saw in his smile that he already knew.  
  
“Until then,” she said.


End file.
